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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 17, 2016 1:44:02 GMT -5
So, first and foremost, the day didn't start off too badly thanks to my finding some of the guides - I got lucky, for sure. I managed to prototype a Top Hat before entering, which wasn't too threatening. After getting in, I followed up with my copy of The Odyssey - Odysseus as a guide? Yes please. Thankfully it's a modern translation.
The Maria "lonelyIsolationist" Alto made her way in after me. That was when things went from fairly okay to problematic. Now, I'm not one to judge why somebody has a poster of Michael Bolton as Scarface on their wall - the comedic value alone is pretty solid. But when imps suddenly start having M16s and are constantly singing the same line over and over, well, that becomes annoying pretty quickly. I'd done pretty well at avoiding conflict and letting Maria handle the problem imps, but when they started shooting it got a lot harder to keep safe. It was at this point, I started to realize that I'd have to fight the imps, despite my qualms. Moral obligations come after surival needs.
I was, with Maria's aid, able to get up to my first gate and out of the Ebonpyre pretty quickly. She told me she used her second prototyping to make ScrfceBltnSprite into CptJckScrfceBltnSprite. I had not realized how much she liked that one song.
Felix "dedicatedEternity" Hall followed Maria in. Thankfully my screaming had alerted everyone to the dangers of throwing just anything into the Kernel, and so Felix found the lamest thing he could - a dictionary. The songs gained new lyrics each time, but that seemed to be it. Haven't heard yet what he prototyped second yet
This brings me to my good friend Lilia "chaosAntagonist" Sewick. She's pretty normal, pretty straightforward. She figured something simple, without too many connotations would be safest. There was a coconut. She tossed it in. All was well. Hardier imps and the occasional sound of galloping. Not too bad, all things considered.
Next came T rry "gentleLocomotive" Coburn. Ter y is a model train enthusiast. Terr thought about the whole sprite thing for just long enough to determine he wanted a really cool sprite. Being a fan of trains, erry has a copy of Final Fantasy VI - the one with the Phantom Train. He also has a model of said Train. He through said model into the kernel. Ghost Train Imps. - Like, I mean he got in to the medium and is now dominating every last imp thanks to prototyping the game and having a sprite that can suplex trains but... ugh they are annoying.
This meant that all that was left was for me to help Louis "disillusionedGrove" Rockefeller make it in. While dealing with Train imps with guns. He was the one who informed me of Terry's follow-up prototype, and I was the one who forced Louis' first prototyping to be a wet paper towel. Louis prototyped Pacific Rim as his follow up post-entry, so as you can imagine he's got a pretty potent sprite too.
Anyway, that's the short of what we did getting in. I'll update you guys as I get more info, but before I go deal with more imps, I'll leave off with the most recent discoveries: our titles.
Two cataclysm classes - I think GL has void, too. How screwed are we?
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Post by horrorTerror on Apr 17, 2016 7:45:50 GMT -5
If you want to know, your session has a lot of firepower aspects, but it seems to be intrinsically bugged due to cataclysm-of-essential. Survival is unlikely, but not much more so than Sburb usually is. Try to get through without any permadeaths. Analysis below!
Dealing with two cataclysms is gonna be one hellish problem once it goes down, but with your player loadout...
Page is a high-potential straight combat class, so provided nothing else bad other than Sburb's official mandate happens you'll be able to brute-force things reliably. As a Time player the Beat and intrinsic knowledge of time shenanigans and timey wimey feels will probably be useful as all hell once Space and Void decide that your session needs a change, and if what happened when causality broke was any interpretation your Whisperings MIGHT get all protective and help demand spacetime make sense again. If nothing else it'll help you with an escape to the Ring if and when your session becomes utterly unwinnable. Probably a good idea to get a frog spacesuit in advance, but I'm just a little jaded. Time being what it is, you might want to be careful with future and past. Don't forget to alchemize a shovel for burying all your dead bodies if you lack lava!
Prince of Breath is the Destroyer in the aspect of Destruction. This guy's interpretation can be at such extremes as either 'end the breaking of everything' or 'end things being not destroyed', but while destroying with destruction is more straightforward, destroying destruction might be useful if the breeze cooperates. That's all lategame and mostly up to him. Also a high-potential straight combat class which is archetypical of the aspect for another good interpret hope. Breath has some abilities which can sometimes interfere with reality-level abstractions and their glitches when they do the windy things, though nothing to the extent of Rain and the Flux/Ploy pair, but suffice to say his whisperings will at least TRY to keep stuff coherent for him personally, not that it will be nearly as helpful.
Guard of Life is a passive and defensive fighter class. As a Life player, designated combat healer and as a passive-defender he will be at least a little friendlier to non-combat heal-throwing so once he gets the hang of his aspect it'll probably be lenient in the face of what you have to put up with, not to mention with your prototypings combat is going to be pretty damaging if something goes wrong so he doesn't even have to leave interpretation to help you. The Growth is not exactly all comfy-cozy with fundamental reality shenanigans but for this session the Guard is probably the best guy to help when somebody gets severely damaged by reality glitches or gets shot outside of lyrical screaming range of a crystalanth.
Guide of Rain ensures that things reach completion [ words amounting to of I guess ] insanity. This gal's mythological role as an explorer and with Rain backing them is absolutely perfect for this so once she gets the madness synergy going or the session goes loony for her she will be borderline essential. Once Space and Void go down if she's not dead or incapacitated everything's something new to explore (especially if the cataclysm goes down the way I expect a glitch like that to). While Rain probably won't help everyone ELSE deal with the crazyspacevoidbomb, Rain is up there with Space, Time, and Void for handling abnormal spacetime situations so the Voices are going to do stuff like give her directions through crazy fold magicant that actually work so if she demands you follow her to somewhere new and not completely messed up she might be right. Worst comes to worst once she understands how her classpect works figuring out and freestyling up a psybuff to share 'how the hell do I navigate when space isn't working correctly' is going to be essential for at least the Guard and probably the Prince too and will likely shoot her ARC through the roof, but if things go well the cataclysms won't break the session too badly. Rain is actually pretty good if you surrender and acknowledge the dark sides of reality~
Grace of Space rains down metaphysical destruction on the session, albeit as a passive class probably more deep-new-feature-of-incipisphere style rather than 'this area is now aspect bomb' blow-it-up-and-done. She will change the session immensely with her spacey powers! Probably. At any rate it will be a long-term effect, so be careful. Space catalcysms are supposed to NOT HAPPEN so there's not much data on what the potential ranges of effects are, but I expect 'drastic change in space' or 'spherical planetoids not where they used to be'. If nothing else, expect lots of portals. Aspect mastery is essential to fixing what went wrong. As the Space denizen is supposed to be naturally awakened and ergo not particularly hostile due to Lighting the Forge, so she should probably get that quest started. Space denizen is probably gonna be a great help on figuring out exactly what the space cataclysm exactly does if they're still around and the effect wasn't immediately obvious beyond 'everything is suddenly different' or 'nuke everything'. Maria is a name conceptually tied to nukes (Sburb is completely insane), so if she has any uranium in her dwelling spire anywhere expect large explosions. While Whisperings tend to scrub radiation from the incipisphere, crystalanths cure radiation poisoning, and Lands regenerate, nuclear weapons still have their uses in mass destruction. Just try not to hit any allies.
Waste of V id is....okay I a so done put ng p with Nul today ca lin Lillian.
This post has been *blessed* by Mist on the sending end, so iiif letters keep duplicating to stop the Void it happens. Not perfectly accurate but it will help. Won't do anything for viewing end but it'll make writing this stop losing letters so I can read over my work.
With that resolved, the Waste of Void is an active cataclysm class of the aspect of erasing things and emptiness. That said, while his cataclysm can be '[ relevant area of session ] is now just completely gone oopsie', it can be erasure of key scripts to maintaining game normalcy or causing giant magicant expansions that fill the session with holes leading to holes leading to a basement. There are a few examples on this forum of what could happen.
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 17, 2016 11:04:46 GMT -5
Okay, so we're not completely screwed after all on that front. Nice.
My land - the Land of Candles and Hourglasses - has been pretty calm so far. No major bugs, everything has been going well, and my consorts are these cute little red bunny-lookin' things. I think I'm the lucky one though, while I was sleeping I got all kinds of reports from the others.
LI has the Land of Globes and Uranium and Frogs. She didn't have any radioactive stuff before to my knowledge, so I guess the game is making up for it in spades. And apparently, this stuff is glitching out hard - The Uranium is disappearing and reappearing randomly. Based on what you've said, my guess is it has something to do with the whisperings scrubbing of radioactivity and land regeneration going head to head in a buggy mess. Chameleon consorts are not helping her situation at all.
DE has a far more normal situation in the Land of Plains and Tornadoes. Flamingo consorts along with it. Apparently the Tornadoes are pretty easy to avoid if you're paying attention, and he's got a theory that they congregate around Atomyk Ebonpyres.
CA. She's got the of the Land of Lollipops and Marmalade. Said something about consorts with Kaleidoscope eyes and running some tests before I could ask her more. Any idea if the world would be safe to eat?
GL's land is a little worrisome. So far they've been calling it the Land of and Train-tracks. We're not sure if it's the aspect erasing GL's messages or if it's a worst-case scenario of the Land having GL's own aspect. All information they've tried to send us about it and the consorts has been erased too. If it is a l nd of v id, w at should we do?
DG's land is beautiful in a way that feels almost designed to make him hate it. It's the Land of Flowers and Sunshine. The consorts are tiny unicorns. His reaction on entering was something I will forever be thankful for seeing.
Oh, and last thing before I go and start working on the lead up to the Knell - I'm still, y'know, a pacifist. Imps are one thing, sure, but even now I'm not sure how I feel about hurting them... I don't know if I want to find my Denizen. Are you guys certain there's no way to just work things out without, y'know, murder?
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Post by horrorTerror on Apr 17, 2016 11:57:49 GMT -5
Your denizen effectively dies at their discretion, not yours, and they do not even die because they just simulexist across sessions and manifest new bodies with every Land they are reborn on. If you can hold onto that urge to be pacifist your denizen might go easy on you and be already dead or let you slay them. Or he/she will troll you to all hell about breaking your morals, it depends on how they feel plus what it really says deep down in your soul because they look down there, like Heart players but more powerfully and seeing through edits. Send them a message from the Furthest Ring that their abuse will come back to them some day in Hell, but that won't help you unless you take the easy ways out of the twisted metaphor of life that is Sburb. You are effectively agreeing that your abuser has finished their job of stockholm syndrome inducement and you no longer wish to fight them when you no longer want to kill even just the body they communicate with you through and they say 'okay you have done enough now kill me'. Shed tears you would for losing a frenemy or sparring partner to them moving away for a new job, not for killing them.
Imps and other underlings are really more facsimiles of lives than real ones. They are not sapient by default, if you want some help dehumanizing them realize that they want you dead and that is their only purpose in being produced beyond dropping grist in death. Consorts and carapaces are fully sapient, and the Black King is really unsavable. But he's standing in the way of a whole universe in favor of murdering children rather than the cause leading up to his war, so he doesn't want or deserve your mercy.
You were actually paradox cloned to create, but Sburb is one helluva bag of conflicting morals that only gets worse the further you go.
What does LO AT look like when you look at it? A ball of traintracks in space with a bedrock core holding the Underworld? If it is a void land rather than a blank land it should not be lethally buggy provided what exists stays constant and it is not missing quests, as the aspect is shared not different.
LOLAM should be edible, but avoid overdosing and be careful with candy alchemization to avoid spawning saccharine problems and doppelgangers.
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 17, 2016 14:14:12 GMT -5
Well, see, that's the thing. We can't see LO AT. We know GL is there, from what they've been able to send us, but very little seems to be getting through when they try to send us info about it. DG has confirmed it exists, he's seen it and it's basically train tracks and emptiness, aside from the pillar of land that GL's house is on. GL has encountered only one consort so far, as well - probably the secret consort from what little we've been able to learn.
I let CA know about the edibility of her land. She'd already run some tests with consorts to test it, and has confirmed your expectations with her own experience now. She agrees she's gonna keep away from it for now, though she's worried about how she'll interact with it in the long run - she's pretty apprehensive about the whole Rain thing.
I guess I'll just figure out the situation with the Denizen when I meet them. Knowing they'll still exist in some way... that's something, at lea- Wait did you say I was cloned?
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Post by horrorTerror on Apr 17, 2016 17:55:09 GMT -5
Oh hell.
This is a very awkward situation...uh....Do you have your Time-mandated psybuffs yet, knowledge of what an alpha timeline means, and a solid realization that whatever mockery of an intelligence Sburb has, it is to torment you? If not, stop after this paragraph and come back when you have them. You need to arm and armor yourself, get through a dungeon or ruin or whatever, and rinse, upgrade, and repeat until you have acquired the tools which lock down response to some traumatizing stuff and gloss over it so you don't more or less break down at an inopportune time. Player suspension of normal trauma responses only goes so far. I'm going to give you even MORE spoilers, oh joy.
Suffice to say that because Sburb *makes no sense* your existence is technically a *paradox* created by *cloning* yourself with crazy magic machinery and goo somewhere in the veil, but because of how inconsistent the game is beyond that 'it is mandatory and the game breaks or dooms itself if that doesn't happen' there's no real explanation why.
If your session is post-Scratch this doesn't concern you. If it hasn't Scratched any times yet (DO NOT SCRATCH THE SESSION THAT ERASES YOU FROM *REALITY* IN A WAY THAT CANNOT BE FIXED AND THAT IS *BAD* SO SAVE IT FOR WHEN EVERYONE'S DEAD AND THE SESSION IS *BUST* AND NOBODY ELSE CAN SAVE YOU IF YOU HAVE TO), someone will need to do some *weird* thing known as Ectobiology that basically consists of getting to a special Veil meteor somehow, dancing all over a keyboard and pressing a button repeatedly to acquire paradox slime, then magic machinery makes some babies and also your parental guardians because having you originate normally would raise further questions and/or break some other logical origin determinator, then at some point shortly after all the babies get teleported to meteors, sometimes stalled in time if the Reckoning is not immediately nigh and given some of the random junk they're found with, equipped with the [ Coolkid ] ability that protects them from all the logical consequences of being on a flaming meteor shot through a portal, then when the Black King gets WK's scepter (it is an inevitability unless your session is broken in different ways than we know it is, in which case it is even worse), when he's flinging the whole Veil at the Battlefield, Skaia will fling up some defense portals in response, which send the meteors into relevant points in host universe timeline to cause your origins. This occurs separately for the Debug NPC white asshole with green energy who may or may not have been hanging around the Space player pregame, and in a different format your Space player does something similar with a froghunt to lock their locations known in alpha timeline so they can get paradox slime for them all and figure out how to build a genesis frog.
Ectobiology as an event is inevitable because in a sense of temporal shenanigans it has already happened and been cast in alpha, do not fight it doing so leads to doomed timelines and all sorts of nastiness and it is a bazillion times horrible and scary and eegh. As a Time player you're going to learn hard that all things known are locked in alpha and unchangeable except to be made worse by colossal forces beyond your comprehension. If you have your time traveling equipment yet, enjoy the experience of burying your first corpse, because it is coming soon if it hasn't happened yet.
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 18, 2016 12:25:35 GMT -5
Okay, so I went and did as you said - Got myself a good weapon for my pcktwtchkind specibus, made myself a nice new getup, and managed to get into a couple dungeons. Luckily, I got a psybuff pretty quickly, so I'm back to look at what you've said so I can make some sense of it.
I gotta say, this isn't as hard to wrap my head around as I thought it'd be. Maybe it's the psybuff. Hard to say. My only question is... how would we find out that is is a post scratch session?
Oh! Also! More word from GL's world - and just to confirm everything we know right now, it is basically just a ball of train tracks and nothing else aside from a couple of floating landmasses, and the ball in the center. GL and DG have informed me that they think there might be a little more land to work with on the other side of the planet, but GL is gonna need more time to explore - and access to flight, probably. Any crafting suggestions?
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Post by horrorTerror on Apr 18, 2016 12:58:37 GMT -5
Post-scratch sessions usually get their Sburb by download and usually have higher echeladder points on entry (there's a data guide to this somewhere on this forum or on the tower archives but I don't remember where). Most of the other indicators require meta-knowledge, access to things players intrinsically cannot have access to because they are in other spacetimes entirely, or comparison of constants to other worlds or aren't concrete.
Jetpacks jetpacks jetpacks. Wings of not-angels also work. Actually, better idea. Make a captcharoid camera and photograph the raised wings with blackish flight feathers visible (but not the whole thing) of some flamingo consorts or flying land-familiars. If DE's flamingos are not too different than standard flamingos then they should be able to fly, and decently fast to boot.
Once you've got a flying thing's code, alchemize it with a backpack or something else to make it equipable or whatever. Sburb-alchemized vehicular equipment tends to have infinite fuel most of the time so test out the wings on a safe land first to figure out the controls then make sure they won't give out at an inopportune time.
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Post by smashingBrawler on Apr 18, 2016 14:07:26 GMT -5
Oh man, a Waste of Vo and a Grace of Space? I cannot even begin to described how excited I am to hear about what those two pull off. But yeah, wings are awesome, though you might want something a little bit more potent for the Land of Plains and Tornadoes.
The prototyping aren't too bad, either - My first session had pirates, a Pokemon, and a combination of guns and bio-weaponry (which is still not even my worst prototyping choice to date) at their disposal. The M16s are less than ideal but you'll get used to handling them.
What I'm curious about though is the horse noises from the coconuts. I mean, Monty Python and all but, I wonder what that means in the long run, and if it effect the king/queen at all.
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 18, 2016 16:25:59 GMT -5
Heh, yeah, I guess it isn't to bad after all, thanks for the encouragement and advice, smashingBrawler!
horrorTerror, we've got the wing-creation process going and DE has pretty much taken it upon himself to create up and deliver all the wings, so that's taken care of. He'll fly through his second gate and visit me when he's got it done.
In other news, GL woke up on Derse the other night, and has confirmed that all the derse dreamselves are in order - both my own and that of and that DG - Derse is basically having a time and a half with all the top hats. Apparently, everyone loves the Top Hats.
However, CA also woke up that night on Prospit, and while the dreamselves are all there, there's something that I think is supposed to be worrisome - the prospitain agents are supposed to be playing music all the time, right? As in, they aren't supposed to be active as agents? Because she said they are totally doing stuff that isn't jamming out and are actually acting as agents.
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Post by horrorTerror on Apr 18, 2016 17:59:02 GMT -5
Something affected the variables keeping agents from agency?
This is not essentially bad as the Prospit agents tend to be neutral (something about how the WQ is neutral to players and is therefore not sending the agents on murder missions, while Jack Noir actively has stabbing problems and is prone to ordering kill missions as Archagent.).
Provided the Distinguished Manner hats stay the everliving hell away from PI the tall weak-looking fellow this might not be a problem (PI will go Katamari with Gravitic Hoop if he gets one of those and with top hats abound they will be harder to ferret out). If nobody gets Questant's Lament and WQ herself isn't infected/active, PS the prospitian archagent or maybe equivalent has a way different bank of potential routes. I hear that because Derse agents have a mafia shtick Prospitian agents act as private investigators and more police than bureaucrats. So basically they bring down the lunar law on people rather than murdering diplomatic guests in their sleep.
...I do not know much about your player culture but what prototyping provides top hats?
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 18, 2016 20:12:23 GMT -5
First prototyping on the list - one of my own Tophats. It was pretty likely to happen. Anyway, what are Distinguished Manner hats, and who is PI? Oh and my comment about the prospitan agents was in reference to the Glitch FAQ - GGtG mentioned that they tend to hand out and play music instead of doing their jobs - which is why I was concerned (See: [07C] on Carapaces). Good to know that it shouldn't be a problem. Oh, and, uh, just to be clear the hats aren't common around my world or anything, its more my own thing.
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Post by horrorTerror on Apr 18, 2016 20:39:06 GMT -5
oh derp me should have reread first (note to self: stop posting while doing paperwork)
Oh, whew. That was a close one.
There's this quest [ Acquiring All The Hats ] mentioned in the guide that can spawn a whole bunch of messed-up tall hats in the dreamscape that give whoever's wearing them Distinguished Manner. Whenever the tall prospitian agent PI (his name has variance between sessions because unlike Jack Noir and the royals it's not fixed, he gets silly stuff like Pickle Inspector or Prospit Interrogator or Petulant Intern or Pensive Investigator) gets one, it makes him go a tad bonkers and start gravity hooping things all over the moon. With tophats being commonplace they're no longer easily demarcated so on Prospit-side it's a bad idea to trigger that quest since it can lead to actual problems rather than just silly carapaces getting sillier.
I ran into distinguished!PI once while investigating a broken session. It was scary to see Prospit all crushed and self-impaled like that.
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 18, 2016 21:44:52 GMT -5
Alright! I'll make sure to tell everyone that the quest is off limits. I'll make sure to cover Questant's Lament with everyone while I'm at it, DE should be around in within the hour to deliver wings so I'll join him on the journey to cover it, plus I wanna give a more complete and direct report of the La o an T tr ks . A sumin i le ' me sa a y hi g.
No new glitches to report.
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Post by trepidatiousPacifist on Apr 19, 2016 10:14:16 GMT -5
Alright, so, everything is still going well. Got my wings, had the talk with everyone. Felt really good to see them all. GL managed to locate an entrance to the Magicant, so that's awesome.
Maturity quests have been going well, as have dungeons. I'm gonna be heading to meet my Denizen soon I think, I'm pretty close to completing the pre-denizen land quests. I still haven't woken up on my dream moon or anything yet - is that normal?
Oh, and are we going through this too fast? I feel like it should be taking longer to get as far as we are - is it common for people with help to be getting by quickly?
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